Josephhasfun01 wrote:So you assert that mythologic beliefs porporting the idea that gods and goddesses drawn out to form constellations were based on actual gods and goodesses and not made up stories about the constellations.

Austra wrote: No, that's not what I'm asserting at all. I'm not discounting the possibility that constellations were based on things that ancient people considered to be gods. I'm unconvinced that this is the case, seeing as there is just as much evidence for this scenario as there is for your God, however it is a possibility.

Constellations had a beginning austra! Things that began to exist as part of the universe are not at all the cause of the universe. This is elementary level stuff man! Come on!

You have the burden of proof Austra. Let's hear it!

Austra wrote: I've made no positive claim, I've just stated there is another option besides your false dichotomy.

You mean there are plausible claims other than your false dichotomy!

We have the stories as they were written by humans not stars. the bible was written by humans under the inspration of the one and only true living God.

Darkprophet232 wrote:Both are considered forgeries per the first qualification, and if I were willing to grant that this is 100% accurate and Josephus himself wrote it down, so what? You have contemporary evidence that there was a guy named Jesus who was a pretty chill guy, and his followers invented stories after his death. He says nothing about a HORDE OF ZOMBIES storming Jerusalem or any of the other miracles of the gospels any chronicler would have at least mentioned in passing. Remember, I don't care about a Jewish rabbi living circa 20 CE, I'm talking exclusively about the Jesus of the gospels, the guy who RAISED A MAN FROM THE DEAD, and NO ONE thought it was important enough at the time to write it down.

Not all scholars believe them to be forgeries. Want proof? Here is a law school that list famous historical trials and they list Christ's trial. Josephus passages are mentioned as evidence.

You could not have picked a worse person for this comparison. Jefferson wrote an autobiography, was featured in news articles across the US, was a prolific writer on the founding of the nation, other people that lived during his time wrote about him, he had many portraits commissioned during his life, and people can still track their lineage to him. Oh, and he was the President of the US for 8 years. All of that leaves historians a trail to follow.

Jesus has NONE of that. Nothing. No contemporary writings (other than a possible, "eh, Jesus is a pretty cool guy, he's virtuous and doesn't afraid of anything) were written during his time, and yes, that included Tacitus. He was born 20 years after Jesus was supposedly executed, and without ANY RECORDS of his life or death, Tacitus had to rely on the beliefs of Christians for this history. There was no independent way for him to know of Christ, and even then, he STILL doesn't offer any evidence as to the accuracy of his claims or miracles.

Whatever, my point was 60 years is not a long time as far as history is concerned. Tacitus was a Senator and would have had access to official records that we do not. At least that is what most historians believe, unless you can prove otherwise, then I am going to take their word for it.

I also find hard to believe that Tacitus would have written about a man that never existed based on the testimonies of people he hated. Especial when that book was the history of the Roman Empire.

The time to start believing things is when we have sufficient evidence. Not a moment before.

Call me crazy, but I tend to side with the majority of scholars and historians who believe Christ was a historical figure.

tuxbox wrote:Not all scholars believe them to be forgeries. Want proof? Here is a law school that list famous historical trials and they list Christ's trial. Josephus passages are mentioned as evidence.

Indeed, not all scholars believed it to be forgeries. I find it however that this somewhat misses the point. Because:a. Darkprophet232 granted for the sake of argument that the accounts were no forgeries.b. Josephus was not even a contemporary of the supposed Jesus, so what he really has is someone else’s say so.

tuxbox wrote:Whatever, my point was 60 years is not a long time as far as history is concerned.

It is more than enough time for it not be contemporary and for it to be based on say so across more than 3 generations.

tuxbox wrote:Tacitus was a Senator and would have had access to official records that we do not.

This is a fallacy. You are assuming that because he was in a better position to have checked with records that such was in fact what he did, when most likely he never looked for those records and that is if those records even existed. There is no indication that it did.

tuxbox wrote:I also find hard to believe that Tacitus would have written about a man that never existed based on the testimonies of people he hated.

The problem is he didn’t. He wrote about the followers of Jesus, and as such the mention of Jesus was inevitable, and couldn’t write more about Jesus then what he was told.However it is not hard to conceive that there might have been records of a man named Jesus who was executed, it is far harder task to tell which (if any) of the people named Jesus that were executed was the one that was revered as a messianic figure. People named Jesus were quite common and so were messiahs, perhaps it is even based on 2 people instead of 1. The problem is, you just can’t check it.

Ps. If you are thinking of nicking the idea of the 2 Jesus in order to make a bestselling book not based on historical fact, I want my share of the profits.

"I have an irrefutable argument for the existence of...." NO, STOP! You are already wrong!

Master_Ghost_Knight wrote:Indeed, not all scholars believed it to be forgeries. I find it however that this somewhat misses the point. Because:a. Darkprophet232 granted for the sake of argument that the accounts were no forgeries.b. Josephus was not even a contemporaryof the supposed Jesus, so what he really has is someone else’s say so.

It is more than enough time for it not be contemporary and for it to be based on say so across more than 3 generations.

For the love of Dr. Pepper, I am slow!! Okay, now I understand objections to the non-Christian evidence.

This is a fallacy. You are assuming that because he was in a better position to have checked with records that such was in fact what he did, when most likely he never looked for those records and that is if those records even existed. There is no indication that it did.

Well yeah I am assuming, but it seems to me since he wrote the Annals which was the history of Rome from AD 14-68 that he had access to more than just hearsay. Which in my opinion makes it a reasonable assumption.

The problem is he didn’t. He wrote about the followers of Jesus, and as such the mention of Jesus was inevitable, and couldn’t write more about Jesus then what he was told.However it is not hard to conceive that there might have been records of a man named Jesus who was executed, it is far harder task to tell which (if any) of the people named Jesus that were executed was the one that was revered as a messianic figure. People named Jesus were quite common and so were messiahs, perhaps it is even based on 2 people instead of 1. The problem is, you just can’t check it.

Fair enough, but you are assuming he learned about Christ via the Christians, just as I am assuming he had records of Christs execution. So how am I the only one running into the fallacy wall?

Ps. If you are thinking of nicking the idea of the 2 Jesus in order to make a bestselling book not based on historical fact, I want my share of the profits.

It was quite common in antiquity for historians to write about miracles the person had performed. It seems like in those times historians did not have the mindset or means to investigate the claims, so they just wrote down what people believed. In "Life of Pythagoras", Pythagoras is written to have calmed storms and healed with music. Vespasian, in the "Lives of the Caesars" is attributed to have performed healing miracles as well. In "Life of Apollonius of Tyanna", Apollonius is said to have cured blindness and raised dead among other miraculous deeds.

There really is no shortage of miracle stories in biographies written in that area of the world around the time of Jesus. That is something to keep in mind when reading the gospels.

I have reconstructed the immaterial argument and it is ready for you take a crack at it. Hit it with your best shot! Fire away!

1) Immaterial things exists independently of material.2) The universe follows laws that are immaterial.3) All laws require an intelligent law deliverer. 4) Immaterial laws of the universe require an intelligent transcendent immaterial law deliverer.5) God is non spatial.6) God is immaterial.7) God is timeless8) God is self existent.9) God transcends the universe.10) Thus God is the immaterial law deliverer and therefore God exist.

Support & explanation for: 1) There is most likely going to be some confusion about immaterial things existing independently of material because even before time, space and matter began the laws and rules which material abide by have always existed for our universe. They have always existed in the consciousness of God. The dogma of believing that immaterial natural laws depend on material to exist is not factually based. 2) We discover the immaterial laws of the natural universe by our observations of how physical entities interact within our universe. 3) All laws need someone to deliver them. To give them. 4) If no one put laws in place then they would not exists and as result our universe would be non existent. 5) God is non spatial, therefore, He does not require space to exist. 6) As God is not dependent on space to exist He therefore cannot have any mass or physical form. He must be immaterial. 7) God is timeless as He is not dependent on time to exists. Therefore 8) God is self existent as He does not require a cause nor anything in order to exist. 9) God has always existed as an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient and benevolent consciousness and thereby transcends everything that has begun to exists.

I think MGK did a better job responding to his than I can, but since it was addressed to me I will reply.

Not all scholars believe them to be forgeries. Want proof? Here is a law school that list famous historical trials and they list Christ's trial. Josephus passages are mentioned as evidence.

Your source is a lawyer that teaches at a law school (main consideration is constitutional law) and discusses famous trials as a base for one of his classes. I wouldn’t call him a scholar on antiquity by any means.

If, on the other hand, you’re saying that any scholar in any field who shares the belief in a historical Jesus and copies the two references that you have is automatically an expert on the subject, well, there’s a reason I wouldn’t trust Lawrence Krauss on biology.

To further my point, a quote from his website:

Christian scribes edited the writings of Josephus, probably adding references that surfaced in some versions to the performance of miracles by Jesus and to the ascension of Jesus three days after his death. Historians reconstructing the account of Josephus generally omit those references as interpolated.

After admitting that Josephus’s writing had been altered, he then immediately quotes one of the lines from that some contend is a Christen alteration!

Whatever, my point was 60 years is not a long time as far as history is concerned.

You are correct; 60 years is nothing in history. But this is a straw man because my point is that 6 DAYS would be too long for a historian to write about someone that has no official record of ever living. Try it for yourself. Find a news clipping regarding the death of a homeless John Doe and try to find out ANYTHING about him that isn’t hearsay. Keep in mind that you would have a major leg up on Josephus and Tacitus because at least you have a body to start from.

Tacitus was a Senator and would have had access to official records that we do not.

Let’s Occam’s Razor this. I’m saying that Tacitus was relying on the hearsay of Christians at the time in order to bash them, which he did… a lot. You’re saying that Tacitus had access to a super-secret-double-hush-hush record of Jesus’ execution that no one else ever talked or wrote about, and has since been destroyed or lost. Are you really saying the second is more plausible than the first?

I also find hard to believe that Tacitus would have written about a man that never existed based on the testimonies of people he hated. Especial when that book was the history of the Roman Empire.

Instead of thinking as Tacitus as a paragon of historical information which he was collecting to spread across the Roman Empire at a later date, think of him as a Roman senator that, among writing family and war histories, also wrote down the things that were happening around him (and gave opinions on those situations) whose writings historians have later used to help understand the history of his time. Does it make more sense now?

Call me crazy, but I tend to side with the majority of scholars and historians who believe Christ was a historical figure.

Appeal to authority and argumentum ad populum. You and I have access to the same information the historians do, and more importantly, we can think for ourselves and evaluate the facts as they are presented. These anecdotes wouldn’t fly for confirming that Alexander the Great had successfully waged war in India (which some historians say never happened) and as such do not meet the burden of proof for me to believe they are true. But by all means, continue to believe whatever you like. Just don’t pretend you have a good or convincing reason to.

“The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down." -The Judge― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

Josephhasfun01 wrote:10) Thus God is the immaterial law deliverer and therefore God exist.

Even if I were to grant you every single premise in your argument, you still couldn't conclude that God was responsible for the status quo of the Universe or that it even exists. Even if I were to grant you a prescriptive interpretations of the laws of nature, there is nothing in your premises that implies/requires that God was the thing that made it that way. As far as the argument goes, it could have been a cosmic pudding that farted those laws and the Universe into existence. Which incidentally doesn't make less sense then to say that God spoken things into existence.

Josephhasfun01 wrote:1) There is most likely going to be some confusion about immaterial things existing independently of material because even before time, space and matter began the laws and rules which material abide by have always existed for our universe. They have always existed in the consciousness of God. The dogma of believing that immaterial natural laws depend on material to exist is not factually based.

I find that the irony is somewhat lost on you, because the belief in a God that does those things is the dogmatic position here. And your projection of dogma on the point that naturals laws are not dependent on material is absolutely ridiculous given that there isn't a single observable instance of what you call the immaterial in the entire human history to ever be anything else but an idea held by minds.

Josephhasfun01 wrote:2) We discover the immaterial laws of the natural universe by our observations of how physical entities interact within our universe.

Again, natural laws and description, who are very much encoded in a brain.

Only legal laws could be dictated. You are completely conflating the meaning of law in the "laws of science" and "legal laws". Natural laws are not dictate like legal laws, you have the same lunatic mental state as the king that prohibited the tides from rising.

Josephhasfun01 wrote:4) If no one put laws in place then they would not exists and as result our universe would be non existent.

The Universe would still exist independently of the laws you create to describe them.

Josephhasfun01 wrote:5) God is non spatial, therefore, He does not require space to exist.6) As God is not dependent on space to exist He therefore cannot have any mass or physical form. He must be immaterial. 7) God is timeless as He is not dependent on time to exists.

Unjustified attribution of properties to God. You could as easily say that God is the state of Texas. It is just random crap.

Josephhasfun01 wrote:Therefore 8) God is self existent as He does not require a cause nor anything in order to exist.

As I have stated before, to say that God is self existing doesn't bring you any closer to proving that God exists. I could just as easily say that the Cosmic pudding is self existent, or that the magical pie that manifests itself in time and space precisely in my mouth and right now is self existent.For God to exist in a self existent manner it has to exist in the first place. If God doesn't exist then he doesn't exist (in a self existing manner or otherwise).

Josephhasfun01 wrote:9) God has always existed as an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient and benevolent consciousness and thereby transcends everything that has begun to exists.

And his name is Bob, and he works at a scrapyard where he lives with dog Benson, and he cries every night because strawberry flavored jello is not blue.

There is absolutely nothing salvageable from your post.

"I have an irrefutable argument for the existence of...." NO, STOP! You are already wrong!

Upon reflection, no. Not really. The immaterial, such as mathematics, describes the physical. You cannot have one without the other. They are mutually inclusive.

Big problem here with your objection to my first premise. “you cannot have one without the other” is a propositional fallacy.

Mathematics exist independently of material. Mathematics is immaterial. Material is concrete. They are not mutually inclusive. Laws of mathematics have always existed. We discovered the laws of mathematics. The laws of mathematics exist independently of our abstract thinking. “you can’t have one without the other” is a propositional fallacy=Affirming the consequent.You’d be correct to say that we use mathematics to describe observations of physical entities. To say that mathematics can’t exist without something to describe, is fallacious.2) The universe follows laws that are immaterial.

Accepted.

This is the happiest day of my life. You have accepted something I said. I must call and tell everyone I know! Although I doubt you do not accept it in the sense that we did not deliver the laws the universe follows.

3) All laws require an intelligent law deliverer.

So close, yet so far. Your conflating laws as prescription with emergent properties that are descriptive. It's basically an argument from semantics.

Hold on a minute! Laws are prescribed! What emergent properties are you referring to? Emergent properties of the universe? What? We discover something new about the universe and now all the sudden the universe has emergent properties? :lol Talk about an argument from semantics!

4) Immaterial laws of the universe require an intelligent transcendent immaterial law deliverer.

Given your failed refutation of the other premises I don’t feel you’re in any position to give any refutation comprising of merit. I gave explanations in individual support for each premise and you did not even address them or quote them or refute them. Your apathy is showing. As far as I can see God exists.

devilsadvocate wrote:It was quite common in antiquity for historians to write about miracles the person had performed. It seems like in those times historians did not have the mindset or means to investigate the claims, so they just wrote down what people believed. In "Life of Pythagoras", Pythagoras is written to have calmed storms and healed with music. Vespasian, in the "Lives of the Caesars" is attributed to have performed healing miracles as well. In "Life of Apollonius of Tyanna", Apollonius is said to have cured blindness and raised dead among other miraculous deeds.

There really is no shortage of miracle stories in biographies written in that area of the world around the time of Jesus. That is something to keep in mind when reading the gospels.

Josephhasfun01 wrote:Big problem here with your objection to my first premise. “you cannot have one without the other” is a propositional fallacy.

No, it's not.

Mathematics exist independently of material. Mathematics is immaterial. Material is concrete. They are not mutually inclusive. Laws of mathematics have always existed. We discovered the laws of mathematics. The laws of mathematics exist independently of our abstract thinking. “you can’t have one without the other” is a propositional fallacy=Affirming the consequent.You’d be correct to say that we use mathematics to describe observations of physical entities. To say that mathematics can’t exist without something to describe, is fallacious.

No, it's not. If you lived in a universe devoid of material substance then by what frame of reference would you infer the concept of 2 + 2 = 4 from exactly?

This is the happiest day of my life. You have accepted something I said. I must call and tell everyone I know! Although I doubt you do not accept it in the sense that we did not deliver the laws the universe follows.

You need to get out more.

Hold on a minute! Laws are prescribed! What emergent properties are you referring to? Emergent properties of the universe? What? We discover something new about the universe and now all the sudden the universe has emergent properties? :lol Talk about an argument from semantics!

Continuing to conflate legality with properties of the universe doesn't make you point more valid. The only one making an argument from semantics here is you.

How in the world does that not follow?

Because you're conflating law or rules as used to describe legality with inherent properties of reality. To quote Peter Corning:

"Rules, or laws, have no causal efficacy; they do not in fact “generate” anything. They serve merely to describe regularities and consistent relationships in nature. These patterns may be very illuminating and important, but the underlying causal agencies must be separately specified (though often they are not)."

Physical laws describe interactions that we view as consistent in specific circumstances. Nothing more. They didn't need an intelligence to "give" them to the universe, the exist as a property of the universe.

Given your failed refutation of the other premises I don’t feel you’re in any position to give any refutation comprising of merit.

Sticking your fingers in your ears and ignoring the opposition by pretending your bullshit hasn't been refuted doesn't make your bullshit less refuted. At this point you're acting like a child.

I gave explanations in individual support for each premise and you did not even address them or quote them or refute them. Your apathy is showing.

Your exposition is as irrelevant and nonsensical as your bullet points.

As far as I can see God exists.

Good for you. How about you go pray to him and ask for some books on logic and philosophy. Failing that, try Amazon.

How awkward the biographers of Pythagoras must have felt plagiarizing stories that wouldn't supposedly happen for another another 500 years.

Next time Joe, look up the people we're talking about.

Not sure but... wasn't Vita Pythagorae (Life of Pythagoras) written in the third century CE? Indeed, I can't date ANY biography about Pythagoras to BCE. I'm sure you meant that the stories supposedly happened near 500 BCE, but Joseph does, for the first time, have a relevant point: They could indeed have been plagiarized.

That being said, there were much earlier stories: Horus, Osiris, Buddha, Krishna... They all share similarities with Jesus and were there centuries, sometimes millennia earlier. It's quite clear that if anyone plagiarized from the other, then the stories about Jesus were plagiarized from the earlier ones, not the other way round.

"Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed." ― Friedrich Nietzsche

Inferno wrote:Not sure but... wasn't Vita Pythagorae (Life of Pythagoras) written in the third century CE? Indeed, I can't date ANY biography about Pythagoras to BCE. I'm sure you meant that the stories supposedly happened near 500 BCE, but Joseph does, for the first time, have a relevant point: They could indeed have been plagiarized.

You are correct and I should have chosen my words more carefully. Iamblichus was the first do an actual biography, however his research was based off of writings from Pythagoras' contemporaries and students. I'm not 100% on this (my admittedly scatter-shot research on Pythagoras was done many years ago), but I believe this text goes into pretty good detail about the whole thing.

However, I don't believe for a single second that Joe was aware of this.

“The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down." -The Judge― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

All that can be conclusively proven is that around the time gospels were written, it wasn't uncommon for biographies to detail miraculous deeds performed by the subject. I have to say, though, considering miracles by definition are extremely rare occurrences that defy what we know is possible, and considering that people misinterpreting what they hear or see, being gullible, or simply lying is not exactly uncommon and doesn't violate any laws of nature, I'm persuaded that most likely none of that stuff actually happened.

Josephhasfun01 wrote:Mathematics exist independently of material. Mathematics is immaterial. Material is concrete. They are not mutually inclusive. Laws of mathematics have always existed. We discovered the laws of mathematics.

1. Mathematics is Abstract.2. Mathematics as an abstract set of concepts, is in fact contingent on the material, as all abstract thoughts they need a mind to reside.3. There is no such thing as "Laws" of mathematics.Perhaps what you mean is theorems.

So stupid it burns!Math is nothing but abstract thinking. There is just absolutely nothing concrete about it at all. This sentence couldn't possibly be more wrong.

Josephhasfun01 wrote:You’d be correct to say that we use mathematics to describe observations of physical entities. To say that mathematics can’t exist without something to describe, is fallacious.

What describes the observations of physical entities is physics, which indeed uses maths (but physics is not math, important point).I wouldn't say that mathematics couldn't exist without something to describe, however mathematics couldn't exist without something in which to describe mathematics.

Josephhasfun01 wrote:2) The universe follows laws that are immaterial.

Repeating this ad infinitum doesn't make it true. You have been called on this to many times, and frankly you are just getting fucking annoying.

Josephhasfun01 wrote:3) All laws require an intelligent law deliverer.

Again. This could only possibly apply to "legal law", which is NOT what the "laws of physics" are. I have pointed you this just the post before. Are you mentally retarded or are you purposefully ignoring me?

Josephhasfun01 wrote:Hold on a minute! Laws are prescribed!

For the thousandth time. The laws of physics are not prescriptive, they are descriptive!What part of this you don't fucking understand? Is this such an hard concept to understand?

Even if I were to grant you the physical existence of immaterial laws (whatever the fuck that means) there is absolutely nothing in that that requires such a thing as intelligence, transcendent, immaterial, law deliverer or any combination of those properties.IT DOES NOT FOLLOW!It's like trying to argue with a lobotomized dog who just learn how to type in a computer.

Given your failed refutation of the other premises I don’t feel you’re in any position to give any refutation comprising of merit. I gave explanations in individual support for each premise and you did not even address them or quote them or refute them. Your apathy is showing. As far as I can see God exists.

What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

I'm really grown tiered of arguing with this fucking uneducated, lobotomized hillbilly. You deserve no fucking respect.I find arguing with a brick wall is rather more productive, and there is far better chance for the brick wall to learn anything than Joseph. I'm out.

"I have an irrefutable argument for the existence of...." NO, STOP! You are already wrong!

Upon reflection, no. Not really. The immaterial, such as mathematics, describes the physical. You cannot have one without the other. They are mutually inclusive.

Big problem here with your objection to my first premise. “you cannot have one without the other” is a propositional fallacy.

Mathematics exist independently of material. Mathematics is immaterial. Material is concrete. They are not mutually inclusive. Laws of mathematics have always existed. We discovered the laws of mathematics. The laws of mathematics exist independently of our abstract thinking. “you can’t have one without the other” is a propositional fallacy=Affirming the consequent.You’d be correct to say that we use mathematics to describe observations of physical entities. To say that mathematics can’t exist without something to describe, is fallacious.2) The universe follows laws that are immaterial.

Accepted.

This is the happiest day of my life. You have accepted something I said. I must call and tell everyone I know! Although I doubt you do not accept it in the sense that we did not deliver the laws the universe follows.

3) All laws require an intelligent law deliverer.

So close, yet so far. Your conflating laws as prescription with emergent properties that are descriptive. It's basically an argument from semantics.

Hold on a minute! Laws are prescribed! What emergent properties are you referring to? Emergent properties of the universe? What? We discover something new about the universe and now all the sudden the universe has emergent properties? :lol Talk about an argument from semantics!

4) Immaterial laws of the universe require an intelligent transcendent immaterial law deliverer.

Given your failed refutation of the other premises I don’t feel you’re in any position to give any refutation comprising of merit. I gave explanations in individual support for each premise and you did not even address them or quote them or refute them. Your apathy is showing. As far as I can see God exists.

There are problems with your claim that the laws of mathematics have always existed.

Laws are simply what we call the inferred relationships within and between systems in Nature based on our observations. These relationships are the result of the various properties inherent in Nature - essentially due to physics and chemistry.

Another point of which you seem to be unaware is that all thinking is a posteriori.

Think about it.

Kindest regards,

James

"The Word of God is the Creation we behold and it is in this Word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man."The Age Of Reason